I’m trying to finish this “ribbon drawing” tool. It is now stable, allowing users to add, reset and erase the shapes. I also added some new physics simulations (attraction, wind) and fixed others — springs are stable and oscillation can interact with other simulations.

Finally, I added the option to “playback” the drawing and record everything as a png sequence — so people can use it to make videos.

Since January, I’ve been tracking my extra-class activity at Parsons and also the time I spend on freelance projects. I don’t use any software, just a spreadsheet:

date

class

project

activity

start

pomodoros

10/26/2014

printmaking

abc

designing

17:00

///

— where ‘pomodoro’ refers to the Pomodoro technique. Each slash here represents half an hour.

I haven’t done anything useful with data about Parsons so far — the one about freelance projects has helped me plan things better. So I wrote a openFrameworks sketch to visualize it, reading the data from Spring 2014:

The representations are far from being readable — the list at the top is much more useful. But my idea was to print it as an abstraction anyway.
I printed the second version and traced it using a ballpoint pen and a sharpie. I added some textures to get away from the original visualization a bit more.

I like the rice paper texture better (blue print), but the Speckletone paper definitely works best for lithography.

I’m trying to make this drawing tool that generates ribbons. The final goal is to allow people to draw some interesting things — I can only think of calligraphic shapes, but anyway. And, hopefully, they can apply some physics effects and export everything as a video.
This tool has ONE user in mind: Laura. She needs it to make some letterings.

I made a small script in openFrameworks to load and render all fonts installed in my computer at the same time. Then, laser cut it on an MDF board and printed.
Below, the images for uppercase A and B. The latter seems a lot darker, might be due to more variations in its form.